{"id":1934,"date":"2010-10-26T23:30:22","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T05:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2010-10-26T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T00:44:11","slug":"halloween-the-safest-day-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1934","title":{"rendered":"Halloween: “The Safest Day of the Year”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blogger Lenore Skenazy reprints a valuable article looking at the “urban myth” of children being targeted by sexual predators at Halloween.<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul Stern, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., agrees [that there is zero evidence for such a belief].\u00a0\u201dPeople want to protect kids; they want to do the right thing and they make decisions based on what at first glance may make some sense. Sex offenders, costumes, kids \u2014 what a bad combination,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201dUnfortunately, those kinds of policies are not always based on any analysis or scientific evidence,\u201d said Stern, who started prosecuting sex offenders who victimized children in 1985.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogger Lenore Skenazy reprints a valuable article looking at the “urban myth” of children being targeted by sexual predators at Halloween. Paul Stern, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., agrees [that there is zero evidence for such a belief].\u00a0\u201dPeople want to protect kids; they want to do the right thing and they make decisions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-halloween"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-vc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1245,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1245","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":0},"title":"Free-Range Kids Have a ‘Scary’ Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"One last Halloween post, and then I'll shut up.Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry speaks truth to power and rejects the nanny state on October 31.If you want to see something really scary on Halloween, come to my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0470471948","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6787,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6787","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":1},"title":"The Myth of Halloween Sadism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Myth in the popular sense, that is to say, an urban legend, says sociologist Joel Best, who has been studying the razor-blade-in-the-apple and similar stories for decades. Visit his website and click the tab for \"Halloween Sadism.\" Halloween sadism is best seen as a contemporary legend (sometimes called an urban\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":542,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=542","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":2},"title":"No costumes, please, we're teaching\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"No costumes, please, we're teaching to the testSome Colorado \"educators\" are going to great lengths to show how hard they are working to raise standardized test scores. The latest gimmick at some schools is to ban school Halloween parties.I think for the most part the real reason schools are doing\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1243,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1243","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":3},"title":"How to Celebrate a Christian Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Writing at First Things, an \"interreligious\" journal (\"inter\" as in Catholics and Protestants, maybe), Sally Thomas faces that annual hurdle of the Christian parent: What To Do About Halloween. How can it be fun and still be doctrinally acceptable? She writes,Halloween\u2019s emphasis on darkness makes many Christians squeamish, but, to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3369,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3369","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":4},"title":"Did You Contribute to the Halloween Economy?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is worth more than $2 billion annually. Not really that big in the overall holiday picture, though. Halloween's haul was the smallest, accounting for a mere 2.6% of holiday spending. But for a few industries, October 31 is the night to shine. According to the National Confectioners Association, sweets-makers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1846,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1846","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":5},"title":"Today Show Goes Silly on Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's more than silly to Lenore Skenazy, who calls it the \"outrage of the week.\" She is the feisty author and blogger at Free-Range Kids. Anyone who has any contact with kids under 12 ought to be reading her. Imagine if the Today Show guidelines had been in place when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}